The firm, which is primarily known for its hi-tech thermostat, launched in the UK this week after strong sales in the US.

Self-discovery

Nest chief executive Tony Fadell wrote: "We identified this problem ourselves and are not aware of any customers who have experienced this, but the fact that it could even potentially happen is extremely important to me and I want to address it immediately.

"We're enormously sorry for the inconvenience caused by this issue."

All current users of Nest Protect who have their device connected to the internet via wi-fi will have the feature disabled automatically.

He said that all current owners of Nest Protect alarms would be offered refunds, and added that he thought a fix could take between two and three months.

Mr Fadell stressed that the company discovered the fault via its own testing and had not received any complaints from customers about the issue.